This was a good time for Marian Gaborik to stop squeezing his stick so tight, to be the threat John Tortorella's Rangers need him to be, to be Braden Holtby's worst nightmare.

Because there will be playoff nights when phenom Chris Kreider will not show up more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. There will be nights when Henrik Lundqvist is not the best goaltender in the world, King of kings. There will be nights when the other team is the more desperate team, nights when the Rangers do not play the right way for all 60 minutes and their fans are left with Broadway blues wondering how their boys can make a legitimate run at a Stanley Cup when they remember to only bring a water pistol to a gunfight.

There will be nights when the Rangers need Gaborik to be something other than The Invisible Man, nights when they need him to be the 41-goal terror he was during the regular season.